(Re)Mapping Native Denver and the Making of Native Assembled Counter-Cartographies

Abstract

Decolonial worlding is a place-based endeavor. In this article, we trace the making and unmaking of settler imaginaries in Denver, Colorado, and how Denver’s Native community refuses otherwise. We situate the geo-conjunctures and vital relations that shaped the making of the (Re)Mapping Native Denver art exhibit, including the role of Universities and colonial mapping practices, to the long history of Indigenous peoples’ resistance. From within an entangled colonial University, we show that the curations assembled in the exhibit enact an Indigenous politics of refusal, one where each curation (re)maps a Native Denver. More than an art exhibit featuring the stories by Denver’s Native community that stood as a site of public-facing education, (Re)Mapping Native Denver shows how Indigenous geographies are expressed through Indigenous mapping practices. We demonstrate the potential and necessity of Native assembled counter-cartographies—forming a relational assembly of maps that no technology can break.